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Apr 18 2012 - 4:19am

William Bateman, 87, Peggy Binder, 61, and Robert James Bateman, 48, of Tampa, Fla., are descended from Titanic victim Rev. Robert James Bateman. They were on the Azamara Journey memorial cruise. (ERIC WYNNE / Staff)

He tried to get women then known as "wayward" off the streets of Florida.

But his last acts of charity unfolded on the icy waters of the North Atlantic in the desperate, panicked, hopeless wake of a sinking Titanic 100 years ago.

Rev. Robert James Bateman of Jacksonville, Fla., pounded on his sleeping sister-in-law’s second-class cabin door.

He rushed her and other women to the decks. He helped her into a lifeboat. And as the lifeboat lowered Ada Balls to the sea, he took off his neckerchief and threw it to her so she wouldn’t catch cold.

He later went down with the ship.

His descendants have been on another ship, the Azamara Journey, for the past eight days, remembering who Bateman was and what he did.

And paying their respects to all the others, more than 1,500, who died with him in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912.

As the 100th anniversary cruise headed back to New York on Monday evening, a spectacular sunset over the Atlantic Ocean cast a glow across the water like thousands of tiny diamonds on the sea.

The Tampa Bay-area family stood on Deck 10, reflecting on the present and the past as their own journey neared its end.

"We’re very proud," said 48-year-old Robert James Bateman, his great-grandfather’s namesake.

"I wanted to pay homage and remember his life and pay tribute to the 100-year anniversary, so I went online and I Googled ‘Titanic anniversary.’ This cruise came up, and my father was in the room with me, and I go, ‘Do you want to go? Let’s go.’

"We invited some of our family members as well. It’s been a fantastic trip."

His father, William Bateman, 87, and his sister Peggy Binder, 61, stood beside him as he retold the story of his great-grandfather’s quick thinking and selfless sacrifice.

"When they hit the iceberg, he went to get his sister-in-law, who was still sleeping at the time, and woke her up and she wanted to get dressed and he said, ‘There’s not time for that.’ So he brought her up and according to her recollection, she was on one of the last lifeboats."

The elder Bateman, William, is the late minister’s grandson. His father, Fred Bateman, was the youngest of the popular evangelist’s seven children. He says his father was only about nine or 10 when the Titanic went down.

But he didn’t hear any direct stories from his father. Fred Bateman, too, died tragically and suddenly, falling 30 storeys from a highrise construction project in Chicago when William was just three.

But stories of his grandfather’s good works and final heroics were well-known in the family and community. When his recovered body was buried in Jacksonville in 1912, throngs of people, many of them ministers and dignitaries, came to pay their respects, William says.

William was grateful to be able to say his own farewell at 2:20 a.m. Sunday as the Azamara Journey held a memorial service over the Titanic wreckage at the exact time the mammoth ship slipped beneath the waves 100 years ago.

"We felt close to the ceremony," he said. "We felt like we were part of the Titanic and all the people that gave up their lives there.

"And there was a sadness. And then there was also a pleasure of being with all these people that had interest in the Titanic and the people on board."

There’s been a stark contrast between revelry and remembrance on board the Azamara Journey since the ship left New York on April 10. It sailed first to Halifax, where 150 Titanic victims are buried in three cemeteries, and then to the site of the sinking.

Some Titanic buffs have dressed in period costume — women in the replicated finery of 1912, grown men and little boys in everything from dashing suits and bowlers to white beards and captain’s hats like those worn by the Titanic’s captain, Edward John Smith.

But it’s been an emotional time, too, for Titanic descendants, who’ve wept for the sacrifice or the heroism of their relatives so long ago.

"It pays homage to my great-grandfather," Binder, a retired schoolteacher, said about the man who’d gone to England to bring his sister-in-law to America. And died trying.

"It’s been a wonderful memorial service and it just brings to mind what the people went through. And it’s just an acknowledgement . . . of their lives."

Binder said they "were all in deep thought" while positioned over the Titanic wreckage in the early Sunday morning darkness — "thinking about the events of the evening and what had happened to the people and the families and their children."

On Tuesday, with the sun on the sea and fog on the horizon, the Azamara Journey inched ever closer to New York. It was expected to dock at 7 a.m. today.

In that harbour 100 years ago, the rescue ship Carpathia brought Ada Balls and about 700 other Titanic survivors ashore, hundreds of kilometres from where Robert James Bateman had said his farewell to her.

"If I don’t see you again in this world," he told her. "I will see you in the next."